by Mark Wandrey
“I can fix that,” Sato said, and he grabbed his duffle bag from where it had been dropped by the door.
Rick nodded. “I’d appreciate it.” He picked up his severed leg. “This, too?”
“Let’s see what I can do.” Sato sat next to him. “I need to access your diagnostics.”
“Sure.” Rick instinctively knew how to pop the little hatch on his right shoulder. It clicked open, exposing a series of connections. Sato took a device from his bag and snapped it into one of the ports. “Why not just access it wirelessly?”
“An extra level of security. There’s no way to wirelessly access any of your armor’s systems, not even by you. I’ve always felt it was a vulnerability for CASPers. Too ‘user friendly’ makes you enemy friendly.”
Rick waited as Sato accessed the Æsir’s systems. To his surprise, a prompt appeared in his mind. “Deep System Access Requested—Yes or No?” He indicated yes, and the suit’s diagnostic routine ran for Sato and him to both see. There were a lot of errors, not the least of which was the sea of red from his right leg.
He watched for a time as Sato poked around in the suit’s systems, addressing items that would repair themselves, and either increasing the priority or decreasing it. Rick couldn’t see what the end game was until the nagging ‘pain’ he’d been feeling from his severed leg suddenly stopped.
“How’d you do that?”
“You probably shouldn’t know how,” Sato replied. “Turning off your feelings of pain could lead to making a bad thing worse.”
“I guess I can see that. I thought I was fully integrated into the armor.”
“You are, sort of. It’s best to avoid direct control of the armor.”
“Why?”
“Your pinplants handle much of the command interpretation from your mind to the suit. A direct interface could possibly cause some neural damage.”
“That doesn’t encourage me,” Rick replied.
“Which is why you have the pinplant interface.”
“Okay, but why turn the pain systems off now?”
“Because I need to evaluate how bad your leg is.” Sato got on his knees in front of where Rick sat and leaned close to the severed leg. “You made a real mess out of my Æsir.”
“I thought I was the Æsir?”
“You are kind of one and the same now, I guess.” He looked up at Rick. “But you are still a Human.”
“Am I?”
Sato tapped Rick in the center of the chest with a tool. It made a clink, clink sound. “Inside there.” Another tap on the head. Ting, ting. “And here. I didn’t touch anything that’s distinctly you. I’m sure you’ve looked down below by now?”
“Yeah, and thanks for that. It might seem like a small thing…wait, that didn’t sound right.”
Sato laughed and shook his head as he began disconnecting leads and removing linkages. Rick marveled at the speed and assurance of the scientist’s movements. Manipulating technology seemed almost instinctive to him. Of course, since Sato had designed the Æsir, it only made sense he’d know his way around it.
“How long did it take you to design it?” Rick asked.
“That Æsir?” Rick nodded. “I’ve had the design rattling around my head for years.” He looked up at Rick again. “You know, there’s another reason I rescued you from Nemo.”
“Besides needing a bodyguard?”
“Yeah.” Sato paused for a moment. “We have something in common. I don’t remember anything of my life before meeting Nemo.”
Rick grunted. “I thought it was something like that.” Sato looked surprised. “You know where to go, but not why you want to go there. The woman on the train in South America. And the way you’ve been zoning out sometimes. At first I thought you were just doing some kind of trance. Only you don’t seem to be able to control it.”
“No, I can’t. You see, I suffered an injury, too. Someone from Azure found me on a ship in their system. A shuttle, adrift near the stargate. They rescued me and brought me back to their scientific station. Nemo was put in charge of trying to fix my brain damage.”
“What caused it?”
“They were never sure. It was caused through my old pinplants. I invented a new type of pinplant shortly before I built the first Æsir, back on Prime Base. I didn’t have all the plans clear in my head until the pinplants were installed. Turns out I didn’t invent them either. Dakkar said, as Nemo, he’d helped remove the remnants of my old pinplants.” Sato tapped the side of his head. “They were identical to this design. Once they were in, I began remembering things.”
“They’re reconnecting old memories?”
“Or reconstructing them,” Sato suggested. “Either way, you see, we’re both on a journey.”
“Glad to know we’re in this together,” Rick said, smiling in his armor.
“Oh, we are. You keep me alive, I’ll keep putting you back together, and we’ll see where this takes us.”
“Sounds reasonable. What about Dakkar?”
Sato gave a little laugh. “I’m not sure about him yet. He’s only a month or so old, and already he’s different than Nemo. I only saw a budding once, on Azure. It was early in my stay, and it was a kinda big thing with the Wrogul. I wasn’t invited like some of the researchers; I met the bud afterward. One of Nemo’s…siblings? It’s confusing, because they all come from one.” Sato looked back toward the bathroom. “You know, we’re all the same.”
“How do you mean?”
“Apparently the first Wrogul was found on a ship with all its memories wiped. They’ve never found out what happened. Dakkar shares all the memories of that first one, and each one in the direct line between the first and it, but no others who budded sideways further up the family tree. Maybe Nemo sent Dakkar to have its own voyage of discovery.”
“We’re a great team,” Rick said. “None of us fully remember shit.”
Sato laughed out loud this time. “So it would seem. But you know what? I’m a little concerned about what Dakkar might learn.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. There’s just something about this one I haven’t felt about the others? I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe after I put other pieces together it will all fall into place.” He gave a little shudder and visibly shook off whatever he’d just felt. “Regardless, let’s stick to the task. I’ve got this cleaned up; let me look at the leg.”
Sato hefted the leg, grunting as he moved it to sit on the floor in front of him. With the same deft movements, he went about cleaning the damage away. It reminded Rick of the procedure known as debriding a wound. By the time he’d finished, Sato had amassed quite a pile of burned, bent, and otherwise nonfunctional parts. He leaned back on his legs and gave a sigh. “Done.”
“So you can’t fix it?” Rick asked.
“Oh, of course I can. I was just contemplating how to avoid this in the future.”
“It was a 20mm cannon,” Rick said. “The whole tank thing, remember?”
“Yeah, you warned me. I know, you handled the situation well.”
“You handled those four guys yourself. Do you remember how?”
“No,” Sato admitted as he pulled the duffle bag over again. “Sometimes I just…react.”
“You reacted the fuck out of those four.”
Sato nodded as he removed a box from the bag. It was no bigger than a large book, and of similar proportions. Sato touched a control on it and the device seemed to unfold and grow until it was almost twice the size it had been. A door opened on top, and Sato began dumping the broken components and bits of armor into it. The device made a humming/grinding sound.
“What is it?” Rick asked. He’d run it through his pinplants and gotten no matches.
“The closest analogy would be a manufactory.”
“I thought they were the size of a building,” Rick said.
“Or bigger,” Sato confirmed. “The ship manufactories in New Warsaw are the size of a battlecruiser.” His eyes unfocused for a moment. �
��There are some much, much bigger.”
“You’ve seen them?”
“I think so,” Sato said. “At least, I know about them.”
“What do they build with them?”
“All manner of things, I would guess. Not all good.” He gave a now familiar shudder and looked down at the tiny manufactory. “This device came to me along with the designs for your armor. I think it could do a lot more than this one can, if I eventually remember how to properly program it. Right now it can replicate the parts I need to put you back in order.”
“Amazing,” Rick said as he watched the machine work. Once the hopper was filled with the remnants of his damaged parts, it closed, and the machine sat on the floor, humming. “We were taught that a manufactory is an advanced 3D printer.”
“Oh, it’s far more. There are 3D fabricators at its core, but the mechanism is far more complicated. It can analyze, improve, even reconstruct items from a tiny fraction of the original. This machine is simpler in scope, while remaining as capable in scale.” It gave a beep and opened the hopper again.
“What’s wrong?”
“It needs some raw materials. I can talk to it via pinplants.” Sato got up and walked around, looking for something. The hotel room was small and only equipped with the basics. Sato stopped at an old, worn looking clothes iron sitting on a shelf affixed to the wall. He took it off the shelf and examined it.
“It probably doesn’t work anymore,” Rick noted, considering the iron’s cord was severed at the plug.
“It’s fine,” Sato said and carried the defunct appliance over to the bed. There he took tools from the duffle bag and quickly disassembled it into its component parts. Once he had the steel soleplate removed, he snipped the wires connected to its heating element and handed it to Rick.
“Can you cut this into pieces about 20 centimeters on a side?”
“Sure,” Rick said. He commanded his right arm laser to life, held the metal soleplate in his left hand, and aimed. “Cover your eyes,” he warned, and Sato turned away. He was only going to use 200 watts of power, but the Human eye could be severely damaged by as little as five milliwatts of power. He fired a precise cut, then another, and a third. With the soleplate smoking slightly, Rick used his hands to snap it into pieces. “Here you go. Careful, the edges are hot.”
“Perfect,” Sato said, and fed the chunks into the manufactory. “It needed raw materials.”
Thus resupplied, the little manufactory hummed along for a time before a door opened on the side and a part rolled out. Sato grunted in a satisfied tone and took the part to install in the severed leg. “This will take a few hours,” he told Rick. “How’s your power?”
“Below 30%,” Rick admitted. “Can I plug in while you work?”
“Sure, this is all straightforward. You want to sleep, too?”
Rick thought about it before answering. “I probably should. What about you?”
“Once this is done. Go ahead and rest. Just leave the leg over the side.”
“Okay,” Rick agreed. He removed the power cord tucked into his left thigh and attached a common power adapter. There was a plug next to the bed, so he hooked to it. The armor reported 1,200 watts of power available without stressing the circuit. It would take 92 hours at that level to charge. He programmed his pinplants for a five-hour rest. It would net him a total of three percent more power. Better than nothing, he guessed. Sooner or later they’d come across a high-power outlet, and he could recharge in a minute or so.
With the sounds of the tiny manufactory working and Sato humming an exotic tune, Rick reclined and shut off his visual receptors. He drifted off, reliving going to a concert by a 20th century cover band called Kiss with Jim Cartwright in their junior year and dreamed about popcorn.
* * * * *
Chapter Four
It took another hour for Sato to finish fabricating the parts to complete and reattach Rick’s right leg. He would need to find some of the carbon fiber/nanotube armor to make it as resilient as before, but it was attached and working. The diagnostics showed 92% of previous capabilities.
The round that had caused the damage was a tungsten carbide penetrator with a depleted uranium core, likely a remnant from some conflict in the last century. The frustrating thing was that a CASPer would have shrugged a single round like this off, because its armor was both thicker and had the advantage of a stronger internal structure. Sure, a half dozen 20mm penetrators to the chest would make hash of the armor and the user. However, a single round would be nothing.
“I need to think of something to deal with overachieving attacks,” he mumbled to himself.
The repair completed, Sato went over to the room’s nominal desk—nothing but particle board with a cheap office chair from FedMart. He put the mailbox on the floor, lest it collapse the flimsy office furniture. It was tough enough to hold his toolbox, which he put down and folded open. He dearly wished he’d had room to take a more comprehensive selection. There were less than a thousand various tools with him, not even a corner of his former lab.
The mailbox was in surprisingly good shape, considering that the building around it had been burned down and then survived the crazy battle with the punks. He yawned and began checking out the lock. His screwed-up memory kept overlaying images. Some made sense; some didn’t. The box was the right one; he was sure. Both the numbers and type matched. There was no memory of the key, though, and it was an impressive one. Clearly the drop had been more than just a casual mailbox. Maybe used by organized crime as well, which, considering the neighborhood it was in, made sense.
Picking the lock was out of the question. It wasn’t a skill he was proficient at, and the lock was far too complicated. It was easier to go at the structure itself. The hinges were hidden on the inside of the frame, of course. He could see the points where they entered the sides, and this told him where the pins must be.
Sato selected a little pinpoint laser and linked his pinplants with it. The device had a maximum of 500 watts with a tight beam. He slid on a pair of tiny goggles, dialed the beam as narrow as he could, and tested it against the metal. It took several seconds of holding the invisible beam of the infrared laser to start melting the box. Sato checked the power usage through his pinplants and shook his head. It wasn’t cutting fast enough to show results before the battery went dead.
He replaced the laser and searched the toolkit for other options. After a second, he selected a little device he used for dissecting tough metals. A hyper-tough carbon-carbon blade. Its spine was a tungsten Inconel alloy, and the edge was molecularly hardened with a fusion torch. They were experimental, and he’d only brought two with him. He’d labeled them fusion knives.
Sato stared at the tool for a second, considering. Rick’s arm lasers had enough power to cut into the box; they were also powerful enough to set the interior on fire. The fusion knife wouldn’t set the interior on fire, though it could still destroy whatever it contained if he wasn’t careful.
He shrugged, switched to a different kind of goggles, and slipped on some protective gloves that extended to his elbows. Sato bared his teeth as he clicked the power control and brought the fusion knife to life. In a fraction of a second, the blade progressed from a buzz, to a whine, then past his audible threshold. The edge blurred and began to heat the air. Sato blinked at the effect, as he couldn’t see the edge of the tool anymore.
He didn’t have time to admire the beauty. Being very careful not to get the blade anywhere near his body, Sato slid it into the metal at the point of the hinges. The steel cut like butter with a screeee! sound. Tiny bits of metal spalled from the box, one penetrating his left glove and biting into his wrist.
He hissed at the pain without stopping. Once the blade was halfway in, he moved it a centimeter sideways and was rewarded with a popping from the box. Not wasting any time, he slid the blade back out and plunged it into the other end of the hinges. This time it took a little effort to make the device penetrate, and even more to slide i
t sideways. Scriiiiing was the sound this time.
The box lid lurched and popped completely from its frame, catching Sato by surprise. The heavy steel hit the side of the fusion knife, and the blade exploded. Spraaang!
Sato jumped and flinched away as a chunk of the blade embedded in his goggles, and another tore along the back of his arm like a serrated blade. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed, focusing on the little piece of fusion-hardened steel penetrating his goggles millimeters from his eye.
He pulled off the heavy gloves and examined his wounds. The wrist cut was shallow, but bleeding worse than the gash along his arm. The latter was painful and luckily didn’t result in any metal embedded in his flesh. They also weren’t bad enough to warrant nanites, which was good, because he didn’t have a lot of the little healing machines.
The basic medkit provided all he needed to patch himself and clean up the blood. Again his hands moved with practiced ease, though he only remembered going to the medics a few times he’d hurt himself on New Warsaw. His injury taken care of, Sato cleaned up the remnants of his fusion knife.
Using the desk as a base, and a pair of tweezers, he began reconstructing it. Partly out of curiosity, and partly out of respect for whoever the hotel employed as housekeepers. When he’d first tested the knife’s edge in New Warsaw, he’d checked both the micron measurement as well as the BESS, or Brubacher Edge Sharpness Scale. A surgical scalpel’s edge was rated 0.3 micron, and 40 BESS. The fusion knife was 0.01 micron, with a BESS of 1. Of course, there wasn’t a BESS of 0, so he wondered if a new assessment was necessary.
The last thing he wanted was a piece of his knife to find its way into someone’s foot or hand. It was sharp enough to migrate or dig itself deeper into a body just from basic muscle movements. He laid each blade fragment on a piece of notebook paper. He found them all except a bit half the size of his pinky fingernail. Luckily it was from the blade’s belly, and not really sharp, so he abandoned the test.
